Why is Empathy important in the workplace?

In my previous blog I examined the meaning of empathy.

As a reminder, empathy refers to “experiencing another person's negative or positive emotions as if they were your own.”

Now I want to relate it to our everyday lives by considering why it’s important in the workplace.

Empathy is one of the most valuable skills to have in the workplace, offering the following key benefits:

Improved communication

By practicing empathy, you can better adapt your communication style to the person or group you’re interacting with – adjusting your tone of voice or body language to best fit the conversation.

Enhanced working relationships

When you embrace empathy, you can become a better collaborator and team member.

Why not try to understand your co-workers’ backgrounds and perspectives to build rapport and promote trust? Also, use active listening and words of encouragement when co-workers share their ideas.

Creative thinking

You’ll often need to consider your audience’s perspective, or the most important needs of your target customers.

Using empathy can help you and your team members put yourselves in your customer’s place and think of strategies which would most appeal to you in that situation.

Furthermore, understanding a product or service from the recipient’s point of view can help you identify challenges or opportunities you hadn’t thought of before.

Increased sales

Research what’s important to prospective customers so you can appeal to their needs in your sales pitch. Identify potential challenges they may face and focus on how you can provide solutions.

Enhanced customer service

Having empathy can improve your customer service skills as you can anticipate their wants and needs.

When a customer calls about an issue, they may be frustrated and want you to listen to them.

If you let them tell you everything before you respond, you’ll demonstrate how much you value their concerns.

So now you understand the importance of embracing empathy in the workplace, let’s look at positive ways you can make yourself more empathetic.

Actively listen

Understand questions or requests before thinking of a response. This will help you focus only on the speaker to fully understand their needs, feelings, and perspective.

Personalise your communication

Change your vocabulary and words based on the expertise who you’re speaking to. For example, you may use industry terms when talking with a colleague but simpler, more universal words when pitching to a client.

Helping colleagues

Practice empathy by offering to help in any way you can. This demonstrates you’re dedicated to ensuring your team’s success and will help them achieve their goals.

Different perspective

If your team encounters interpersonal conflict, use the discussions productively and try to see the situation from other points of view. When you understand their feelings, you may be able to better respond.

Ask questions

Asking co-workers and clients various questions about their needs, feelings, and perspectives you can better understand how to help them.

Validate feelings

Even if you don’t entirely agree with someone else, practice empathy by ensuring they know you think their feelings are important.

Finally, please remember that Empathy (and Compassion) are 2 of the 24 Strengths that may or may not energise you.

If you’d like to explore the subject of Empathy more deeply, please contact me via Email: russell@theresiliencecoach.co.uk.